Britain rules out Post-Referendum recession

Britain’s economic growth more than halved in the third quarter, but fears of a post-referendum recession in the second half of the year will prove unfounded, figures this week are expected to show.

In the first official verdict on how the economy has performed since the Brexit vote, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) is expected to say growth slowed to 0.3% between July and September, from 0.7% in the second quarter.

If economists polled by Reuters are correct, it would be the slowest rate of growth since the third quarter of 2015, but would rule out the prospect of a technical recession – defined by two consecutive quarters of contraction – in the second half of the year. It would also beat the latest forecasts from policymakers at the Bank of England, who were predicting at the time of the August inflation reports that third-quarter growth would come in at 0.1%. Read more